nissa riyas the artist

Nissa Riyas is a Dubai based accomplished artist who is a certified graphic designer and a graduate in Computer science. She is a certified oracle data base administrator, but eventually left her software profession to engage fulltime in painting. She has participated in several exhibitions in UAE and India, including her latest successful solo exhibition at academy art gallery in Kozhikode, India in 2014. She takes her painting lessons through her lifelong journeys; she has widely travelled in Europe, Middle East, Far East and Asia. She takes a different route of learning from street painters in London, Paris, Florence, Venice and Switzerland. She has been a self taught artist throughout her life. But her long journeys helped her to formulate distinct styles in her paintings. She has skills in all forms of painting and all mediums. She uses brush, knife, and even hand to paint with oil, acrylic, water colors and charcoal. She is now settled in Dubai and prominently seen in Dubai art space. Her works are with galleries in UAE and India and with many private art collectors in Middle East.

Her aim in painting is to communicate the feelings of a moment. For her, the things that define that moment are those temporary transient qualities like the wetness after a spell of rain or a dramatic play of light and shadow. Light is an important feature in her paintings. More often it is the particular quality of light that initially attracts her to a subject